European Media Governance: The Brussels Dimension

By Georgios Terzis

Media Governance today is shifting media rules and regulations from national government policies to local, regional, national, multinational and international ones and away from exclusively governmental domains to others, such as market, professional and public interest/pressure groups. Many media-related civil society organisations are based in Brussels, operate at a European level and influence exactly the part of Media Governance that has escaped the national shackles of the member states. But which are those organizations and who do they represent? Which are the relevant EU regulations for the different media industries that they try to influence? How do they participate in the media related debates in the different EU institutions? What are their major position papers? What is the current state of affairs in the European Media Governance relevant to their industry and what are the future issues that they are trying to tackle early enough at a European level? Finally, how are their lobbying efforts coordinated with other political, professional and public interest groups? 

This book presents the work of ten of these European organizations from a variety of media sectors, as well as the relevant work of the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Consumers Association.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books Ltd
• Release date: Jan 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781841502205

Book preview

EU INSTITUTIONS

EUROPEAN MEDIA GOVERNANCE AND THE ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION

¹

Jean-Eric de Cockborne

European Commission, Head of Unit, Audiovisual and Media Policies; Digital rights; Task force on coordination of media affairs

Harald Trettenbrein

Head of Sector, European Commission, DG Information Society and Media²

1.   Introduction

This paper responds to the editor’s request to describe the impact the work of the European Commission has on the European media with a focus on the audiovisual industry where the Communities activities have most direct effect.

Media governance possibly could cover a wide range of issues: everything from the selling of a book to the download of a music video to a portable telephone is somehow affected by Community Law. This is the reason why the Barroso Commission established a Media Task Force (see point 2). However, this contribution will focus on the audio-visual sector and its regulation and market and technological conditions.

Watching TV or surfing the Internet on your mobile phone, downloading the latest episode of your favourite TV soap to the desktop of your PC – technological convergence is a fast evolving reality. European policies are leading to concrete results: Traditionally separate Information and Communication Technology markets – such as telephony, television and Internet – are converging. Today a single network infrastructure can deliver the full range of multimedia content to both fixed and mobile devices. The regulatory framework has to respond to changed technological and market conditions:

• Telecom and cable operators are moving into each other’s markets offering ‘triple-play’ services (data, voice and video) – sometimes even extended to mobile services. Such trends lead to new partnerships between network operators, Internet service providers and content distributors. Audio-visual content is distributed on any of these platforms.

• The device market has seen a sharp rise in sales of consumer electronics products that bridge the gaps between IT equipment on the one hand and consumer electronics on the other. MP3 player sales almost tripled in the past year with over 25 million units sold in 2005 in Western Europe alone.³ Sales of game consoles, now increasingly driven by online multi-user games, increased from 11.8 million units in 2004 to 16.3 million units in 2005.

• There is evidence of both product convergence and the convergence of industries: IT companies and mobile phone producers both sell portable music devices and digital cameras on a large scale. Radio broadcasts received via Wi-Fi Internet, media centre PCs, home cinema and hi-fi systems in the living room can all now be connected to the Internet. Mobile phones are using Voice over IP (VoIP) and are becoming integrated with home networks and wireless Internet hotspots.

• The online content market is estimated to be worth 1.4bn – an amount expected to double by 2009.⁴ The largest segments of the market are games (26 per cent of the total), music (19 per cent) and publishing (19 per cent). Newly emerging markets for online film would give a further massive boost to growth in such services. Convergence is increasing competition and leading to rapid growth of the broadband market.⁵

• Broadband now reaches 12.8 per cent of the EU25 population (almost 59 million lines), a 21 per cent increase since 1 July 2005 (see chart above). In some Member States, more than half of fixed Internet access connections in households are broadband.⁶

• In October 2005, Europe overtook the USA in terms of the number of broadband lines. Broadband penetration rates in Europe are still behind the world’s leader (Korea) but take-up is growing fast and the gap is narrowing.

• Broadband growth is driven by increasing competition, with new entrants gaining just over 50 per cent of the broadband market in the EU25. Competition is driven by both facility-based competition and effective regulation.⁷

• Persons who have broadband Internet access at home are more likely to be regular Internet users: 81 per cent of residents in household with broadband use the Internet at least once per week compared to 63 per cent of narrowband household residents.⁸

2.   The role of the European Commission

The role assigned to the European Commission by the Treaties is to propose and implement Community Legislation; the Commission acts as ‘guardian of the treaties’.

The European Commission is the only institution of the European Union with the right to propose legislative initiatives which then have to be adopted in most cases in co-decision procedure. It is Directorate General Information Society and Media which is within the Commission responsible in the area of media and audio-visual